Creating Game Art book

Creating Game Art with 3ds Max

Creating Game Art for 3D Engines covers creating game art in 3ds Max, and getting it ready for the game engine. 332 pages, 241 full-color illustrations. Includes a book CD with 90 minutes of video tutorials.

See some short excerpts from the video tutorials here.

Order here or by clicking image at right >>>.

Chapter 1 - Intro to 3ds Max

This video tutorial walks you through some of the basics to 3ds Max - the interface, menus, viewports, and how to create primitives. Includes a video tutorial on modeling (15 minutes).

Chapter 2 - Low Poly Modeling

Creating structurally sound models, adhering to low polygon budgets, modeling pickups and weapons step-by-step.

Chapter 3 - Unwrapping Game Art

Unwrapping our various modeled assets to create a smooth canvas for painting textures.

Chapter 4 - Texturing Game Art

Texturing our game assets, including pickups and weapons, using 3ds Max and Photoshop. Covers creating textures from scratch as well as using photos, reflection mapping, smoothing groups, transparent materials. Includes a video tutorial on Semi-Opaque Materials (7 minutes).

Chapter 5 - Animating Game Art

Animating pickups, weapons, adjusting keys and key tangencies.

Chapter 6 - Exporting Game Art

This chapter contains the details on how to export pickups and weapons from 3ds Max to the Torque engine.

Chapter 7 - Character Modeling

Starting with a front and right-side sketch, we model a humaniod and a robotic character. Includes a video tutorial on how to start the character model (8 minutes).

Chapter 8 - Character Unwrapping

Unwrapping the body parts, applying a utility texture, breaking and overlapping UVs, adjusting UVs for a good canvas to paint upon.

Chapter 9 - Character Texturing

Texturing the humaniod character as well as the robot character. We cover building textures from scratch, using photos, bare metal and peeling paint, rivets, dents, noise, and scratches.

Chapter 10 - Character Rigging

Covers how to set up humaniod and robotic characters. For the humaniod character we employ helper bones and an elegant method of making them work with the biped hips for better resulting animation. Includes a video tutorial on Fitting the Biped (9 minutes), using Helper Bones (12 minutes), and Skinning (19 minutes).

Chapter 11 - Character Animation

Animating root, walk, and run cycles for biped characters. Demonstrates timesaving use of a run-cycle template for effective keyframing. Includes a video tutorial on creating a Run Cycle (7 minutes).

Chapter 12 - Character Exporting

Exporting the character to the Torque engine, scripts included. Includes two video tutorials, one on setting up Multires Level Of Detail (7 minutes) and one on setting up game files (5 minutes).

Your Choice: Torque engine or Unity 3D engine

The instructions and tutorials in Creating Game Art for 3D Engines can be applied to any game engine. Chapters 6 and 12 give techniques for use with the Torque engine, and our new video tutorial available here on our Tutorials page will walk you through using the same game art from the book in the Unity 3D game engine.